Reserved Material declaration includes things not in SRD, geometric shapes.

[jlaufersweiler]

Most of the things that are being reserved in 0.1.2 QuestWorlds ORC License Statement do not actually appear anywhere in the SRD. This is not necessary, and actually presents a problem for compliance as someone receiving the SRD cannot be expected to know what terms, art, etc. appear in all the titles and works referenced.

Similarly, there are no runes or similar geometric designs in the SRD. Should Chaosium choose to include such, their original designs would of course be eligible for Reserved Material status, as well as specific combinations of generic shapes that would constitute a novel expression or trade dress. However, the general case of circles, triangles, squares, and other traditional runes and folkloric symbols are not themselves eligible for reservation (nor any copyright protection) -only Chaosium's specific implementations of such.

Also, the proper nouns section, in addition to referencing materials not present in the SRD (thus not requiring reservation) does not constrain the reservation to original locations, worlds, organizations, etc. While the settings described there are as yet sight unseen, I expect that some of them may include things like "Earth," "Britain," or "New York City."

If this Reserved Material declaration is perhaps pasted in from QW Core, and the latter includes those sample settings and references to other Chosium properties, the broader language might make sense for that text. For the SRD though, reservation should be almost nothing. That's the point of an SRD.

Language quoted for reference:

Reserved Material elements in this product include but may not be limited to all artwork, illustrations, and graphic design, and trade dress, including runes and geometric symbols that are not part of the Latin alphabet or Hindu-Arabic numeral system, and all trademarks, including Call of Cthulhu, Chaosium, Future-World, Magic World, Pendragon, RuneQuest, Superworld, and Worlds of Wonder, and organizations, settings, locations, worlds, plots and storylines including proper nouns and the adjectives, names, and titles derived from proper nouns for Pioneer Space, Age of Miracles, Brave New World, Ouvergend, and the Ruptured Realm and all other elements designated as Reserved Material under the ORC license.

[iancooper]

Similarly, there are no runes or similar geometric designs in the SRD. True, we can probably drop that sentence

referencing materials not present in the SRD (thus not requiring reservation) Again true

You are right most of this is copypasta errors from the Core Book. I'll update

[jlaufersweiler]

That's great. Hopefully you can spare Core the rune goofiness as well. Something like "including proprietary designs for runes, glyphs, and other symbols; and significant arrangements of such designs that constitute fictional expressions or trade-dress" would designate Chaosium's actual assets as Reserved Material without asserting that Chaosium considers triangles and public domain folklore as their IP. Chaosium should absolutely reserve things like its specific Air Rune spiral graphics, but reserving spirals altogether is an invalid overreach - and the firm really should want to be model citizens about this stuff after the previous missteps. For all that I've been a harsh critic at times, it comes from a place of wanting this initiative to be a success.

[iancooper]

Yeah, I suspect that the wording is accidentally overly broad

[jlaufersweiler]

New Reserved Material declaration is much better. Reserving the TM game names not present elsewhere in the text still something of a null-op, but doesn't cause an open-ended externality problem since they're at least explicitly enumerated. It might be cleaner just move them to a seperate TM assertion statement rather than clutter the R.M. declaration with non sequiturs, but there's no harm in having it there beyond noise/clutter.